Never having seen any one hailed-out before, I was somewhat at a loss to know just what form my comforting ought to take. Finally, doubtless subconsciously inspired by "The Greatest Mother in the World" picture, I scooped up all the kiddies in sight and started to dandle them. I had always won approving nods for pulling that kind of a stunt, whether it was in a London Zeppelin raid or a drive of Armenian refugees at Trebizond. Even here it was sound--theoretically at least--for it gave the mother a chance to use her hands and apron to wipe dishes. Where it miscarried was on the practical side--the oldest boy would keep putting his hob-nailed boot in the baby's eye. But when I had cached the baby in its crib and gagged the other two with a handful of wet dried apricots, instinct came to my rescue and headed me off on the proper tack--sympathy stuff. That is, I told her my own troubles and led her to forget hers in sympathizing with them. Sincerely and unfeignedly sorry as I was for these people, I was (momentarily) almost as sorry for myself before I came to the end of that tale of woe. I was a poor farmer from California. (Just how poor, and in how many senses of the word, I didn't confess.) Of all the farmers in the world, none had so many troubles as the California farmer. Take oranges, for example. If the buds escaped the frost probably the tiny green fruit would succumb to the "June Drop." If the latter was weathered, there were the black scale, the brown rot and the red spider lying in ambush, complicated by the probability of water shortage at the end of the summer. If the fruit ran that gauntlet and came to maturity, then there lurked the worst menace of all--the January frosts. And finally, if the ripe fruit survived the frost barrage and reached the packing-house, it was only to be pushed on into the "No Man's Land" of an overstocked market. No man lived with so many Damoclean swords suspended over him as the California orange grower--unless it was the California peach, prune, apricot, grape, nectarine or olive grower; or the walnut or almond grower; or the alfalfa, barley or wheat farmer; or the truck gardener. I had been all of these, I said, and was just about to go on particularizing on the diseases and dangers threatening each crop, as I had done with the orange, when the rustle of a skirt caused me to raise my bowed head. There she was, a half-wiped pie-tin still in the bight of her apron, standing over me and looking down with tears a lot nearer to brimming than when we entered. "And so you have had to come up to Montana looking for work?" she asked in a voice vibrant with sympathy. "What a shame it is we're all hailed-out round here, with no work in sight, and nothing to pay for it with if there was."